2023 – CGW's Blog

My 2023 in review

I’ll now always consider 2020-2022 as three pandemic years, and 2023 as something resembling a return. Much of what I did this year felt like setting a new normal, which I hope to continue in 2024.

I felt more sure as a parent, got back on a plane and felt so much more was in place at work. There were challenges to be sure, but I’m heartened to look at back at something more like the open life I’ve been lucky to have. Below, I share some highlights and review progress on my resolutions.

Will AI be good or bad for journalism?

This answer Sam Altman gave TIME editor Sam Jacobs this month is pretty close to my stance too (clip here). That stance? With an over-supply of content, the differentiation will come from trust and high-quality relationships. That’s why I continue to bet on journalism, and local journalism at that.

Dawn of Everything: how to understand the origins of inequality

Any complex society requires a state, and so any society that doesn’t have a state must not be complex. This circular logic doesn’t hold against the archeological and anthropological record. Mesoamerica, Crete and certain Mongolian periods aren’t exceptions but examples of alternative ways to structure societies in which we ought to listen.

That’s the broadest thrust of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a sprawling and intellectually ambitious 2021 book by anthropologist and activist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. I took most of a month digging through it.

The authors finished the book in August 2020, and sadly Graeber, radical coiner of the slogan “We are the 99 percent” and author of Bullshit Jobs, died a month later due to complications between pancreatis and the covid-19 pandemic.

The 600-page book started as a project to answer where inequality comes from. In the end, the pair aimed to complicate any narrative we have about how societies got structured the way they are. For example, they argue the transition to agriculture was no revolution, but a transition that took thousands of years, and may have finished more because of ecological change than anything. The post Ice Age-thaw slowed and climates stabilized, resulting in less glacial melting and rivers shifting, some 7,000 years ago, after many urban centers had formed. As they conclude: “Extensive agriculture may thus have been an outcome, not a cause, of urbanization.”

Whatever the case, the pair want much more variety in how we all can choose to live. Get the book, it’s a thinker. Below I share my (excessive) notes for my future reference.

Economic development strategies must focus on people, not companies

Economic strategies should focus on people, not companies.

It was always true but the pandemic made it obvious, as Technical.ly reporting has shown. I said something like that in an opening keynote before leading a conversation at the Young, Smart & Local conference in New Orleans last week. I then got to lead a conversation with Dominique Clarke of Tulsa Remote and Perry Sholes. I’ve written on the topic before, but I pulled together data analysis across my reporting. My slides and other pics courtesy of the conference are below.

Named an ‘Advocate for Equity’

Though I was confident I wasn’t going to win, this really was one of those times where I felt honored to be nominated.

I was listed among five collaborators and genuine friends as a nominee to be called a top “Advocate for Equity” by 1Philadelphia, a new initiative focused on inclusive innovation in the region. My bud Michael O’Bryan, who runs a consultancy and is a popular champion of equity efforts, took the honor at an event Saturday. It was part of what the group calls its Innovation Weekend.

When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic

Kids who graduates with high marks at high-achieving schools were later put into a high-risk category for mental health disorders.

Something felt off, so journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace wrote ” “Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It.”

I read it as a parent, so my notes are scant but the point is clear: Pushing kids for academic achievements can reverse course years later. Better to encourage a healthy and happy relationship with learning. Trouble is that short-term outcomes look good for pushing kids — grades go up — but on the longtail, they’re less happy.

Middle managers matter: remarks at TAB event

1 in 5 professionals in the United States now manages people — major growth since 2000, as our economy has shifted. Lots of them are there for the wrong reasons. The good ones do magic. I said something like this on behalf of Technical.ly next to honeygrow founder/CEO Justin Rosenberg and ORS Partners ops Leslie Hafter at this energizing breakfast conversation put on by Matthew Saline and Mike Krupit for the TAB CEO community. Thanks for the opportunity!

Writing for Busy Readers

More words add nuance but clutters central message. Which is your preference: the details or the point?

It isn’t always one or the other, but if you’re writing for busy readers and broader audiences, you ought focus on the point. That’s among the themes from a new book by Jessica Lasky-Fink and Todd Rogers called “Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World.” Add it to a helpful collection of writing about writing that I enjoy.

They have a nice simplified chart here on a site of resources. Below I share my notes for future reference.

Born in Blackness by Howard W. French

The so-called Age of Exploration wasn’t driven by Europeans chasing goods from Asia, a continent with which they had tied for centuries. European developed modern navigation and empire-making in pursuit of the gold-rich African empires that were beginning to open.

That set off the last 400 years of history, including the modern, caste-making of race, simplifying all African peoples into a single “black” category. That’s from the 2021 book by longtime journalist Howard W. French called “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War.” (A review here)

Below find my notes for future reference. I didn’t take as thorough notes as I often do because I found myself reading with a near-toddler but it’s a start.

Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game

Most games have fixed rules and clear ends — the sports and activities we associate with play. Other games have the single goal of keeping in the game — war, politics and life being the most prominent.

That’s a framework first established in a 1986 book by academic James P. Carse (1932-2020), and reinterpreted by The Infinite Game, a 2019 book by consultant, speaker and business-book author Simon Sinek. Sinek turned it into a business book bestseller.

His version references Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Starbucks and other popular big consumer brands because that’s what all these books do. There’s some nice framing but on the whole it reads like an audition for Sinek’s next speaking or consulting gig.

Below I share my notes for future reference